Daily Gospel: 3/31/11

Now I should like to know whether your soul, tired of its own righteousness, is learning to be revived by and to trust in the righteousness of Christ. . . . My dear brother, learn Christ and him crucified.  Learn to pray to him and, despairing of yourself, say, ‘You, Lord Jesus, are my righteousness, but I am your sin.  You have taken upon yourself what is mine and have given to me what is yours.  You have taken upon yourself what you were not and have given to me what I was not.’  Beware of aspiring to such purity that you will not wish to be looked upon as a sinner, or to be one.  For Christ dwells only in sinners.  On this account he descended from heaven, where he dwelt among the righteous, to dwell among sinners.  Meditate on this love of his and you will see his sweet consolation.

 - Martin Luther, (via Ray Ortlund)

Daily Gospel: 3/30/11

Let the laying hold of Christ as my propitiation be the unvarying initial act of every morning.

 - Thomas Chalmers

Daily Gospel: 3/29/2011

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

 - Romans 8:1-4, ESV

Daily Gospel: 3/28/2011

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned - every one - to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

 - Isaiah 53:6, ESV

A new venture: Daily Gospel

I was re-visiting an excellent article by Jerry Bridges this past weekend in the midst of some spiritual darkness and was greatly helped. The article is titled, "Gospel-Driven Sanctification," and can be found here. I highly commend the article to you all.

Bridges raises a number of memorable points in the article, but let's take a look at one thing I was especially captured by:

Gradually over time, and from a deep sense of need, I came to realize that the gospel is for believers, too. When I finally realized this, every morning I would pray over a Scripture such as Isaiah 53:6," All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all," and then say, "Lord, I have gone astray. I have turned to my own way, but you have laid all my sin on Christ and because of that I approach you and feel accepted by you."

I came to see that Paul's statement in Galatians 2:20, "The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me," was made in the context of justification (see vv. 15-21). Yet Paul was speaking in the present tense: "The life I now live ...." Because of the context, I realized Paul was not speaking about his sanctification but about his justification. For Paul, then, justification (being declared righteous by God on the basis of the righteousness of Christ) was not only a past-tense experience but also a present-day reality.

I was struck most powerfully by reading this as I saw the need to fill my heart and soul with gospel meditations daily - ideally before I engaged the world for the day.

Later in the article Bridges commends us to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. This is something that I see as an unparallelled need for my soul, living, joy, and all manner of my interactions and thoughts which occur throughout the day. If I do not begin my day with thinking about and actively meditating on the gospel, I will largely come to the end of that day joyless, useless, empty, or some combination thereof.

That being said, I would like to undertake a new venture for this blog. Lord willing, I will post a short Scripture, quote, hymn or some other gospel-centric content on the blog each morning. This will be done first for the help of my own soul (I shouldn't write for the sake of writing) with the goal of making Christ and his gospel my joy and focus. I believe Piper's maxim, "God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him," is certainly relevant to this endeavor. If along the way, some of you readers are helped, glory be to God.

Obligatory Rob Bell post

Rob Bell has a new book coming out.

LOVE WINS. from Rob Bell on Vimeo.

Here are a few articles worth your reading regarding this new book coming out:

• Denny Burk - Rob Bell Outs Himself
• Justin Taylor - Rob Bell: Universalist?
• Josh Harris - Rob Bell, Hell and Why I Hope I'm Wrong
• Kevin DeYoung - To Hell With Hell

I believe in hell. Jesus (his spoken words and in Revelation) said these things about hell:

• Hell is "of fire" (Matthew 5:22).
• "It is better that you lose one of your members than that your whole body be thrown into hell" (Matthew 5:29).
• God can destroy "soul and body in hell" (Matthew 10:28).
• Snake-like, religious sinners are spoken of as being "sentenced to hell" (Matthew 23:33).
• Hell is an "unquenchable fire" (Mark 9:43). 
• Satan is said to be "tormented day and night forever and ever" in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10).
• The second death is the lake of fire (Revelation 20:14).
• "If anyone's name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire" (Revelation 20:15). 
  
• The eternal judgment place of many is described as a "lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death" (Revelation 21:8).  

It is a very serious error to deny the doctrine of eternal punishment. Hell will be horrible, this is certain. God's wrath will be poured out "full strength" on those condemned to hell and they will not be apart from God, but they will be in "the presence of the Lamb" (Revelation 14:10). To be sentenced to hell is to receive the right verdict for one's sin and to face the wrath of God forever. There is only one way to escape eternal wrath and that is by being saved by the only one who could fully absorb the right penalty for sin: Jesus. 

It is not shocking that God would send anyone to hell, it is shocking that God would save people who rightly deserved hell by giving the beloved Son of God, Jesus, to atone for sins. 

Amidst all this talk about hell, I have a confession to make: I struggle with hell. I struggle not with the existence of hell, God's word makes it very clear. I struggle with the magnitude of sin and my humanist tendencies. I don't grasp the magnitude of sin as an offense against God, the being with the greatest value and worth. Denny Burk provides a helpful analogy in regard to feeling moral outrage against sin and God's value:

Sin will always appears as a trifle to those whose view of God is small. If you were to discover a little boy pulling the legs off of a grasshopper, you would think it strange and perhaps a little bizarre. If the same little boy were pulling the legs off of a frog, that would be a bit more disturbing. If it were a bird, you would probably scold him and inform his parents. If it were a puppy, that would be too shocking to tolerate. You would intervene. If it were a little baby, it would be so reprehensible and tragic that you would risk you own life to protect the baby. What’s the difference in each of these scenarios? The sin is the same (pulling the limbs off). The only difference is the one sinned against (from a grasshopper to a baby). The more noble and valuable the creature, the more heinous and reprehensible the sin. And so it is with God.

If God were a grasshopper, then to sin against Him wouldn’t be such a big deal and eternal punishment wouldn’t be necessary. But God isn’t a grasshopper, He’s the most precious, valuable, beautiful being in the universe. His glory and worth are infinite and eternal. Thus to sin against an infinitely glorious being is an infinitely heinous offense that is worthy of an infinitely heinous punishment.

I am not quite there yet. I don't realize the full magnitude of my sin or others' sin. I tend to struggle with the fact that multiple family members and friends who have died will, barring their unknown salvation to me, suffer rightly for their offense against God. I will only fully realize the heinousness of sin in the age to come.

If Rob Bell's book does advocate that hell will "be empty" as all marketing for it seems to indicate, I can only muster a hint of sympathy for him, for his denial of eternal punishment. I say a "hint" of sympathy because I realize, in my finitude, that my humanistic feelings and incomplete sense of the heinousness of sin does not override Jesus' clear words on hell. That said, assuming the worst for this book, I hope that few who call themselves Christians will be lead astray by this book and that Bell would repent of his heresy. It would be a delight to see that this book would not propagate false doctrine, but let's just say I am not getting my hopes up. All false doctrine must be strenuously opposed.

Mercy, worship, obedience

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship."
- Romans 12:1

"But this exhortation teaches us, that until men really apprehend how much they owe to the mercy of God, they will never with a right feeling worship him, nor be effectually stimulated to fear and obey him."
- John Calvin, Commentary on Romans

Resting on God

Give me intenser faith in the eternal verities,
   burning into me by experience the things I know;
Let me never be ashamed of the truth of the gospel,
   that i may bear its reproach,
   vindicate it,
   see Jesus as its essence,
   know in it the power of the Spirit.
Lord, help me, for I am often lukewarm and chill;
   unbelief mars my confidence,
   sin makes me forget thee.
Let the weeds that grow in my soul be cut at their roots;
Grant me to know that I truly live only when I live to thee,
   that all else is trifling.
Thy presence alone can make me holy, devout, strong and happy.
Abide in me, gracious God.

 - The Valley of Vision, p.235

Lecrae - Just Like You

I want to be like Jesus.

Extraordinary intervention

It seems to me that the point of saying God put Er and Onan to death is to stress that there was an unusual directness about it. God interrupted the more normal processes of life and dying (which he controls) and took them away by a more direct act.

Thus we learn that it is not meaningless to believe that all events are governed by God, and yet to pray that he intervene in extraordinary ways. Governing all does not mean governing all in the same way.

 - John Piper, via the Desiring God blog, emphasis mine

It seems fair to say that God typically responds to the prayers of his saints (broadly, generally speaking) in two ways:

1. Ordinary
2. Extraordinary

I would argue that God ordinarily acts by sustaining creation as it was made ex nihilo 24-7, giving us our daily bread and provision, and the like. We oftentimes see God respond to prayers (or in Er and Onan's case, wickedness) in extraordinary ways. Piper makes a great point in presenting the fact that God is sovereign over absolutely everything in the universe right alongside the fact that it is meaningful to pray/expect that God in extraordinary ways.

Let all the extraordinary acts of God recorded for us be motivation to ask God to move in such ways, for his glory.